desire to become teachers? how do you create that? one piece is clearly money. when you talk to young people who are at the top of their class, in the u.s., the options available to top third college graduates are huge. and when you have average salaries starting salaries around $37,000. the maximum average salary is around $67,000, that doesn t compete. it used to be a generation ago but partly because women and minorities didn t have opportunities outside the classroom. the quality of the teacher corps was subsidized by discrimination in the u.s. those days are gone. we need to pay up in exchange for reform is anybody out there carrying this message, this notion of a grand bargain, money for fundamental reform? michelle rea was the closest of anyone to putting these issues on the table. some people think she s been an imperfect messenger for this because she can be somewhat
now for the best idea where we cut through the political bickering and figure out how to fix something. we both immediately thought of matt miller because he wrote a book called the tyranny of dead ideas and it is full of good, lively ideas. matt, talk to us about obama s educational agenda. what s your appraisal of that? there s been literally no conversation out of the white house talking about the deep inequity in funding. the fact that our teacher crisis is huge. half the teacher corps is turning over in the next decade
buses. coming up next, the best idea where we cut through the political fighting to find real solutions. tonight, we re talking to matt miller who has real solutions for our struggling education system. it starts with, i think, presidential leadership and talking about it right now. i know obama s had a full plate. there s been literally no conversation out of the white house talking about the deep inequity in funding. half the teacher corps is turning over in the next decade that s a huge opportunity or a huge problem.
of a deal. the real opponents are the 95,000 local school board elected officials who are a huge constituency and want to become state legislators and higher officials. i think we have to challenge that because in a global economy, we re going to leave millions and millions of kids behind. how do you make sure when you put the federal money in, localities don t reduce the amount of money they ve been putting in? you have to find a way to make sure they keep skin in the game. and you can design the program in a way that would make sure that they have to match what the feds are doing how do you pay teachers based on performance, which is the critical piece of this bargain that you re talking about? it s a piece of it. but it shouldn t be the only piece. other countries do performance-based pay. in sing pore, they ve got the top kids, the top young college graduates going into teaching. finland and south korea, they attract from the very top of the class. we tend to recruit for
now for the best idea where we cut through the political bickering and figure out how to fix something. we both immediately thought of matt miller because he wrote a book called the tyranny of dead ideas and it is full of good, lively ideas. matt, talk to us about obama s educational agenda. what s your appraisal of that? there s been literally no conversation out of the white house talking about the deep inequity in funding. the fact that our teacher crisis is huge. half the teacher corps is turning over in the next decade that s a huge opportunity or a huge problem. the u.s. is the only wellalthy nation that leaves it to school districts to fund themselves and decide what kids should learn. what are the numbers? how much is federal money, how much is local? when you look at the spending, the federal contribution is around 9% out of the total kindergarten to 12th